42 AN ENGINEER'S OUTLOOK

engineering. In those days one was a missionary, a
propagandist of the value of theoretical training. One
had to preach, insistently, to the followers of an older
rule-of-thumb that time spent in scientific study was not
time wasted. All that is changed now. The younger
generation of engineering professors cannot imagine
how tactfully, how guardedly, we of a less enlightened
age had to beg for tolerance, to plead as it were for our
own existence. To me it marked the beginning of a new
era when the head of a great engineering firm said, ' I
want you to send me, regularly, some of your young men '.
Now they all say that to the happier professors of to-day.
From the big establishments representatives come be-
forehand to learn the names and qualifications of young-
sters who are about to take their degree. The most
promising are snapped up; all seem to find ready em-
ployment ; they are paid for their work instead of paying
a premium for the privilege of entry—though in truth
they have much to learn of a kind no college can teach.
This, surely, is evidence that engineers recognize the
benefit of associating practice with science. Moreover,
the constant flow of youths, so educated, into profes-
sional life makes always for a closer linkage, a quicker
reaction, between the scientific outlook and the world of
construction and design.

From time to time in the history of engineering we
find a new idea born, resembling what biologists call a
sport, which gives an unexpected turn to the process of
inventive evolution. No one can confidently extrapolate
the curve of engineering progress; its equation is liable
to capricious change. And besides those occasional fresh
departures we find, especially in modern times, that the
scientific method is continuously at work, acting always
as an auxiliary to experience in improving what is already
familiar; Thus the influence of science is felt in two